Marvel Studios has been very clever in trying to hide spoilers from its films coming out early, with trailer scenes that don't appear in the final movie being one of their favourite tactics.
But as Ms Marvel actress Iman Vellani, a huge MCU fan, has revealed, there's another thing Marvel has tried to foil spoilers – staging paparazzi photos with props not actually used in the films.
In this case, an Avengers: Endgame set photo that featured the holographic technology BARF labelled on a box was 'leaked' before release, and caused tons of Redditors and YouTubers to speculate about how the tech would be used to reverse the damage Thanos had done (and therefore, not speculating about the time-travel aspect).
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Revealing the deception as part of a Reddit AMA on the Marvel Studios subreddit, Vellani talked about how she used to use the site to get her spoilers.
"I did leave the [Marvel Studios Spoilers] subreddit for two years during Infinity War/Endgame once I saw that BARF case set photo leak which turned out to be a total misdirection from Marvel security," she wrote.
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"They literally planted that! And now I have so much respect for Marvel's security team."
It's interesting to consider what other rumours and 'leaks' Marvel planted. So many people were convinced recently that Tom Cruise would be appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as an alternate version of Iron Man – could this have been another piece of misdirection?
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However, not every attempt to hide spoilers worked out well – with the biggest backfire coming when fans noticed that the Lizard was getting kicked by someone who wasn't there in an international trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which basically confirmed that the previous Spideys had returned.
Ms Marvel is streaming now on Disney+.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
